for Bloomberg: ‘Market’s Wrong, I’m Not’: Mike Mayo Loves Playing a Provocateur by José A. Alvarado Jr.

News

for Bloomberg: ‘Market’s Wrong, I’m Not’: Mike Mayo Loves Playing a Provocateur

josé a. alvarado jr.

Jan 9, 2024

Location: New York, New York

Summary

The analyst has won fans sparring with bank leaders who see him as a grandstander. He predicts their stocks will finally take off this year.

A thousand miles from his usual Wall Street perch, a 60-year-old powerlifter stepped into the spotlight as he prepared to dead-lift more than 410 pounds.

Mike Mayo was probably the only contestant at last year’s powerlifting nationals who used to have an Alan Greenspan photo pinned to his apartment wall — and undoubtedly the only one who spends his day job sparring with financial leaders, often moving shares of their banks with just a few words.

But here, in the halls of a Memphis convention center, the analyst hardly looked like an oddity in tight black shorts. Sucking in a breath, he squatted 336 pounds, then benched 230, and finished with the dead lift — walking away each time with a boyish skip.

This week the action shifts to New York as Mayo watches the nation’s giant banks post annual earnings — and Wall Street watches Mayo. Famously intense, the Wells Fargo & Co. researcher isn’t just a spectacle on conference calls, where he’s known to needle banking bosses. His call for the sector is drawing attention, too. Now in his fourth decade covering banks, he’s convinced shares of US lenders are poised for liftoff, and that short sellers should get ready to have their faces ripped off.

The sector was jolted last March as the collapse of three regional banks weighed on the industry. Shareholders worried about the toll that rising interest rates would take on lenders, leaving their stocks behind.

That's meant Mayo has been wrong in his view for much of the past two years. “Market’s wrong, I’m not wrong,” he counters. He’s even emerged as the loudest cheerleader of embattled Citigroup Inc. — the longtime laggard among major bank stocks.

Photographed for Bloomberg, with words by Bre Bradham and Sridhar Natarajan

Provocateur, Powerlifter, Prophet: The Bank Analyst Who Divides Wall Street
The analyst has won fans sparring with bank leaders who see him as a grandstander. He predicts their stocks will finally take off this year.
Bloomberg.com

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José A. Alvarado Jr.

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